Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

We can't believe that we are getting towards the end of the year. It has been almost FOUR months since we came.How time flies! Just as you are trying to embrace life, it just slips away through your fingers like fine sand that is so hard to grasp.

Just as our first part of 2009 was spent in excited anticipation for our mission, the latter part was mostly on getting a handle of what involved in being missionaries.And now with our callings to work in the temple, we are just as busy as can be which is good because there is never a dull moment in our lives. Fortunately we live close enough to the temple that we can be summoned to work any time of the week. We have gone for weeks without taking a p-day off.

Our temple president, Pre. Horner is such a sweet man to work with and his wife is gifted with many talents. A man of integrity and humble faith,President Horner served as the mission president in Taipei 18 years ago. This is now their third mission. We are grateful to the Lord for giving us this precious opportunity to learn from their example.

Our work in the temple has afforded us time to reflect and time to meditate. I stand in awe of the Lord's abiding love and mercy in providing for all of us a sure way to return to His presence, through His atoning sacrifice by which we can conquer sins and obtain our salvation.I will forever praise Him and His holy name. Let's do our very best to follow Him in the coming year, I pray in the name of Christ Amen

Serving 2 masters

On November 1, we had a change of temple presidency. With this change came new callings or additional callings for us, Joseph as the first counselor to the temple presidency and I as the first assistant to the matron.

These callings came as a huge surprise for everyone and a big disappointment for our manager Steve Tsai who was counting on having us to share some of his workloads in Family History after 3 months of intensive training.In order to help him share some of his burdens and also to continue with our love affair with Family History work, we are now working on our dual callings in both departments wearing 2 hats as Family History Are Support missionaries and temple workers, zipping between 2 places across the street.

Our days are full working 10-12 hours a day, 6 days a week for our 2 callings.We are managing well and are LOVING IT.Family history work and temple work are 2 important facets for redemption for the dead. One cannot do without the other.They are equally important to men's salvation. We are grateful that we have this additional opportunity to learn more about temple work.

We have met many individuals whose faith and testimony has really inspired us and instilled in us a new passion for temple work. There is this blind elderly sister by the name of Chen Yang Su Yuen who has been coming to work in the temple for the last 18 years. She usually comes to work for a week on a stretch at a time. The temple has grown very familiar to her through her touch.When she passes the veil someday, she will be able to see what a beautiful the Taipei Temple is and how many people she has helped through the years.

How thankful we are to be living in an era when temples dot the earth with temple blessings more accessible to God's children on earth. I know as we strive to utilize the temple for the benefits of others as well as ourselves, many blessings will come to us as the fire of the covenents will burn deep in our hearts with a unshakable faith in God.

Taipei Parks

It has been a while since I last updated my post. Life has been like a whirlwind for us. We are approaching our 3 month earmark. We came here to Taiwan in the heat of the summer under heavy sweat. Now the weather has changed to a breezy, cool, pleasant autumn which makes our walk to and fro from the office extra nice. But I sure miss the deep rich autumn colors of red, orange, green, brown etc.

We are just about to wrap up on our 2 months' training of Family History Support on the Internet. Very soon we'll have to do the real thing and work as world wide support missionaries .Scary indeed! There is no stepping back. We can only press forward in faith with a steadfastness in Christ.

A walk in the park is our favorite activity on weekends. We try to take our morning walk in the park too to enjoy the greens and to find a chance for proselyting or street contacting. Fortunately we have an easy access to some beautiful parks that are within walking distance.
Most of the people that frequent the parks are older folks on wheelchairs being pushed by their house helps.One morning we found 3 contacts, 2 of whom were Filipinos. In another park, we saw a parade of soldiers who were there for practice.But of all the parks, I like our tiny "temple square" the best. You just can feel the spirit of the Lord here. There are some who have joined the Church after they felt the spirit at the temple square tour.

Sorry I messed up!

Sorry, I messed up last time. I tried to be creative. Now I know that I need to be more traditinal that most people I guess

I am still a new hand with blogging. Can anybody tell me how to edit the pictures once you put them in, like switching them around to different places?

I have a couple pictures I'd to share with you. Hope you like them. This is the Taipei temple

outside our office window.

A typical day in a missionary's life

We can't believe how time flies when we are not noticing. With only less than 17 months left of our mission, sometimes we are frustruated that we are not learning as fast as we would like.

We are old people, you known after all. But it helps to know that Elder Wan and I are part of the world wide support missionaries who connect with one another through internet. Thanks to the modern technology, we are getting trained through web conferences and skpre by trainers that live in different parts of US ,whom we have never met and probably would never meet.They monitor our progress very well.

We learned that a typical day in a missionary's life IS NEVER TYPICAL for it involves many facets. Our job assignments include working full time in the Family History Support office, serving as temple workers, proselying and translation. A full P day is never typical too.

We are very busy but we love it. Our testimony of the Gospel is being strengthened as we engage ourselves in this great cause. During our proselying, we met some , who at first refused to give us his or her phone number, yet upon hearing that we have a great genealogy program or FHE program,changed one's mind.

We saw one of our old friends, Brother Lee Chung San at the Family History Exhibition. He had traced his genealogy records up to 3000 BC, to Wang Dei, our first ancient Chinese emperor in ancient history. The records came to him through alot of faith, diligent searching, and by miracles. It took him several years to submit over 100,000 names to the temple for ordinaces! Probably the names that he submitted alone will keep both the Taipei temple and Hong Kong temple very busy for many years to come!

We have settled down in Taiwan!

After having lived here for a month now, we have finally got over the jet lag and become totally settled down in our environment. We love the people in Taiwan and especially like the Taiwanese noodles and little snacks. They are so cheap here, for a couple dollars, you can fill your hungry stomach with a bowl of steamly hot delicious noodles. I am always hungry for food. I especially like shaved ice with different toppings like canied beans, and grains. They just melt the heat away instantly!

Our work is going well. It's more than a full time job since we are not totally comfortable with the soft wears yet. Our office manager has ordered a humongous computer for us for our old eyes. That really helps a lot.

The other way a mayor TV network came to visit our family history center and interviewed us to ask us why we puts such emphasis on family history work. Joseph explained to them very well from our religious point of view. They filmed the interview with him on TV. He was on TV the second week we came

We Chinese takes pride in writing our family history and preserving it. There are some members who have traced their genealogy records up to Huang Dei, the first emperor in ancient China, to 3000 B. C. Many miracles happen when our hearts are turned towards our ancestors.
Brother Lee as shown in the picture turned in over 150000 names to the temple for baptism and Taipei temple has acquired hundreds and thousands of names which would keep them busy for the next 10 year!

I know the church is true. It is only by obeying the commandments that we can find true happiness in life.

Part ll : our first week in Taiwan

When we were set apart, President Johnson blessed me so we could have a safe passage to our mission. And we did, thanks to the goodness of the Lord.

The church is teaming up with the government to send supplies to help with the flood victims. Missionaries were sent to help with cleaning up the mass. They are doing a great job with the relief effort.

Growing up in Hong Kong, I have had memories of typhoons which would give us some unexpected holidays. But a typhoon like this brings the treat real close to home.

We have settled into our apartment which is a 10 minutes' walk from church, the Taiwan temple and church office building. The rent is $ 600US per month which is very reasonable. We are getting better using our feet to get us to places.

A member took us to Costco for grocery shopping the other day. We walked 3 blocks to the subway station, took a train to Chung Huo, then took another bus to Costco. We hauled(dragged) back milk, cheese, ham, bread, cereals, all 26 lbs of groceries. We used the same route we took, and climbed 2 flights of stairs back to our apartment. The whole shopping spree took us 2 and half hours! What a silly thing to do!. Yet we felt proud of ourselves for having been able to do that. We will be prepared for any kind of emergency>

We are going to have a busy schedule. We work in the office 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. We'll travel to different parts of Taiwan to promote generalogy , answer calls as technical support, help in the temple and to do proselying work.

People envy us for not having have to learn a new language. But to us, the computer language is a NEW language. It is Greek to me all the times. Nevertheless I rely on the Lord to be my best teacher. When I was set apart, I was blessed with the promise that I would not be intimidated by the computer, that I would be proficient with the computer skills needed for my job. I have to say to myself, like the little Tot-Tot-Train "I think I can. I think I can"

Ether 12:27 "If a man come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble: and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselfes before me; for if they humble before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them."

Our stay in MTC

After being here in MTC for 5 days, it was finally time for us to leave. We are sad that we are going to leave our friends, other senior couples whom we have grown to love so much. Their faith and their testimony has a great impact on us. One couple has served mission 4 times and still wanted to do some more.During the last week, we have been uplifted, buoyed up by the spirit of the Lord learning what we could how to become effective missionaries in sharing the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ .Now that we have to go to the real world to put our faith in actions.
Missionary Training center is a deeply spiritual place where 2200 missionaries in training learn what they need to learn to spread the Gospel. We've benefited a lot from discussions, role-plays, watching videos, listening to guest speakers, other veteran missionaries and most important from sharing testimonies with one another.
Tomorrow we'll fly out to Taiwan to start our new lifeas representatives of our Church for the next 18 months. We are going to put our total trust in the Lord , ready to be guided by the Holy ghost , serving our Master with all our heart, mind and strength. I love the Lord and I know that this is His sacred work.